The Archimedes Codex: Revealing the Blueprint of Modern Science

On October 29, 1998, the front page of the New York Times reported that an extremely ugly, unprepossessing book had just been sold at Christie's New York for $2,000,000. It appeared to be the battered prayer book of a medieval priest, charred by fire, doused with water and devoured by mould. Yet underneath the prayers, barely visible below the stains and the soot, lay hidden the oldest surviving manuscript of the ancient world's greatest mathematician, Archimedes of Syracuse. Part detective work and part adventure, part romance and part science, this story is like no other. William Noel and Reviel Netz, who have been studying the book since its rediscovery in 1998, tell the tale, alternating between the history of the book and the history-changing science revealed in its pages.